News products have the chance to get so much better. But it’ll take a lot of change — including in newsrooms
Opinion by Michaël Jarjour*It’s hard to explain what it is that makes product work so unsatisfying in many journalism companies, why attrition in Product is so high, and innovation is painfully slow. But I’ll try.
Often, creating a great product is like creating a great story.
At first, the story seems so compelling. As you dig deeper, it reveals itself as a ball of complexity. Newsrooms are great at tackling this complexity with specific skills and methods. They sort out what needs sorting out to create a story that is compelling, true, and worthy of telling.
It’s similar in Product. We use different skills and different methods to sort out what makes a Product compelling; we find the things that make an experience great, differentiated, and successful with customers.
So why, despite these similarities, can it be so hard and demoralizing for product teams to work in journalism companies? And why are most journalism companies vastly outpaced by consumer tech when it comes to innovation?
Newsrooms have gotten better (sometimes great) at creating environments in which journalistic talent can thrive. The same is not true for many product managers in news: “Some product managers in tier 2 / tier 3 product companies have no idea how energizing it is to work in a tier 1 product environment,” reads a LinkedIn post by Shreyas Doshi. I have witnessed this myself. I decided to write this piece because, truth be told, I’ve not found it very energizing to work in news product environments — not seven years ago and not today. I don’t believe that I’m alone with this.
Some of what makes me feel that way is anecdotal. Recently, a senior product leader in a news organization told me that they wonder whether Product in news is always going to be “just hard or actually challenging.” In other words, will our work ever be as professionally rewarding as Product is in product-led companies? More evidence comes from what you hear across the News Product Alliance community:
Just 30% of respondents in a 2023 survey that the News Product Alliance conducted among its considerable membership said that “news organizations recognize the importance of investing in news product management.”
70% disagreed or even strongly disagreed that “news organizations provide sufficient resources for news product initiatives.”
That’s an opportunity wasted: the problems facing the journalism industry today are problems that product teams are well-positioned to tackle. Questions about how to make our customers love our products. How to make products that sustain the company. How to deal with rapidly changing technology and user needs. How to discover opportunities using different research methods. How to spot which opportunities our companies are best positioned to tackle. And ultimately, how to bring solutions to market with creativity and resourceful execution.
But from what I’ve observed in practice and conversation, newsrooms have low trust that product teams have these skills. Instead of trusting product teams to do their job, they write long lists of features they’d like delivered and then hand them to a product manager to execute their ideas. Product teams in such an environment have low agency, and as a result, all the methods that can help drive innovation end up being more like theater than actual innovation. To complete the vicious cycle, this creates an environment that alienates ambitious product managers who succeed when given high agency. The newsroom equivalent of this is having an investigative reporter aggregate content to chase clicks.
It’s no wonder that we can’t trust product teams, some longtime leaders might say. And I’m sure there’s something to that. They’ve seen so many product leaders come and go — with the innovation nowhere to be found. But while product people came and went, they stayed. And so, when I hear newsroom complaints of “all those bad product managers,” I can’t shake the image of “the guy convinced that all of his ex-girlfriends were crazy.”
So, what change do I hope for? Generally, and especially in senior leadership across companies, I hope to see the disdain for Product teams disappear and be replaced with enthusiasm for processes that make innovation happen — like measurement, experimenting, discovery, and iteration. In practice, many of these processes may seem quirky to outsiders, but they are essential to any effective Product organization. But how do we integrate newly formed Product teams into organizations with historically little willingness to change?
I see two options:
Cede more power from newsrooms to Product teams to allow for product innovation and the processes needed for it.
Build collaborative structures that allow newsrooms to partner with Product teams on product innovation — and be equally accountable.
Power without accountability doesn’t work. But that’s often the reality of the newsroom’s role in product innovation. Of the options listed above, I believe the latter would almost certainly lead to more differentiated and successful news experiences faster. It’s such a unique differentiator in media to have full control over both the experience and the content — but this superpower is rarely utilized.
What this requires, from my point of view, is more openness from newsrooms — and especially newsroom leaders — to engage in product strategy, become more dependable partners when it comes to content strategy, and create space that allows trusted journalists to participate in innovation processes, not just observe them as “representatives.” When this collaboration works, magic happens reliably.
Two more things are required: The first is a change in thinking of product leadership. It’s hard enough never to lose focus on customer needs, but when internal politics become motivating factors for Product teams and company leadership, it’s near impossible. The second is asking clearly for the organizational support needed for change — and getting it.
Newsrooms have changed a lot. And while there are still loads of problems, newsroom leaders have gotten better at creating a culture where more great journalists can do truly impactful work — impactful for the world and the company. I’m hoping for more leaders in journalism companies — including the ones in the newsroom — to allow great product talent to thrive in them as well, quirky processes and all.
*Michaël Jarjour has worked in news product for more than ten years, including at startups like Blendle, legacy publishers, and large tech companies like Twitter. He’s currently Senior Product Manager at the Financial Times.